Thursday, November 26, 2009

It's been a while since I've made a "my five" list, and I thought it was a perfect time to blog it since I have so much to be thankful for this year. It's something some friends and I have been doing randomly (not just for Thanksgiving) for years, and I don't even remember who started it... This year I was reminded by another friend - thanks ACQ!

My family and friends.

Living in beautiful, colorful Colorado. What a difference it makes to live in a place you love!

Our new house that is becoming home more and more each day.

My pupdog Koda, she is my sunshine.

My husband - for all his love, patience, and getting a job here so we could move to CO!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Turkey Day with their families and/or friends!

Note: This was supposed to be published yesterday but somehow I forgot to hit publish... so it's a day late. Oops.

Monday, November 23, 2009

One of the many, many great things about our move, (besides moving to the great state of Colorado!) is that we live close to a Whole Foods now. This could be dangerous...

My hubby and I make an effort to avoid buying foods that are overly packaged, and when available choose glass over plastic. BTW, do you know how hard it is to find ketchup in a glass container?! It's hard, and I bet you can't find it in your local grocery store... we finally did at Whole Foods. So, you can imagine how psyched we were to also find milk in returnable glass jugs from a local dairy - Morning Fresh Dairy Farm. Their products are 100% all natural, and they are in the process of becoming certified organic. They have everything from skim milk to whipping cream, including chocolate milk (from brown chocolate cows of course), seasonal eggnog (sooo yummy), and other dairy products. We tried our first 1/2 gallon last week and it was great. So today I traded in our empty/rinsed glass jug for another, and also picked up a quart of eggnog for my man. We expected it to be expensive (um hello, it comes from Whole Foods) but no, it's only $2.49 for a 1/2 gallon plus a $1.50 refundable deposit for a total price of $3.99! When you return the glass, you get the deposit back. It's not only cheaper than other organic brands of milk, it supports the local community, has a smaller carbon footprint, and I don't have cartons of milk to curb recycle every week. Oh, and did I mention that it tastes better?! I just wish we were on their delivery route...

So anyway, check out your local grocery (it's worth a try), or local farmers market and see if you can find a local dairy! But do your research first, not all are created equal.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

This week is John's birthday week! For weeks I asked what kind of cake he wanted me to make for him, and he finally decided on Rum Cake. So here's a picture of the not so great looking, but very moist and tasty Golden Rum Cake I made (minus the nuts). We found the recipe on allrecipes.com. I had a hard time getting it out of the bundt pan. I have no idea what the deal is lately... the last few bundt cakes I've made have not come out well and it doesn't seem to matter how well I grease and flour the darn thing. Oh, and just in case you're wondering this is no where near clean, I made it according to the recipe since I didn't want to experiment with his birthday cake!

Forgive the bad picture... it was taken with my iPhone because it's just handier than digging out the "real" camera.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Peeps, I have a somewhat funny story that I have to share with you. For those that don't know, I'm recently unemployed (my husband was relocated for a new job) and embracing being a job searching house wife for a while... So here's the deal - I unpack/organize/care for the house and take care of preparing meals while my husband works and "brings home the bacon". I have to admit, I like unpacking. I love organizing and putting everything in it's place but the sea of boxes has been somewhat overwhelming!

Yesterday, I finally felt like I made a breakthrough since the kitchen was almost entirely unpacked and put together, so I decided to cook my first meal in our new house. I had been dying to try the Three Bean Chili Con Turkey recipe from the Clean Eating Magazine email newsletter I got last month. So I'm making the chili - chopping, dicing, measuring like the engineer that I am - and I think it's a little odd that the recipe calls for 1 cup each of dried black, pinto, and kidney beans but does not require them to be cooked. I even mentioned this to John the day before (once I set out the dried beans to soak overnight) and said I thought it was going to take a lot longer than 45 minutes to cook the beans. Well, I get to the point where I think I'm done and decide to check the recipe again because I didn't think there was enough liquid to cook the beans, when I see this at the top of the email I kept for the recipe:

We apologize for any inconvenience but we have an update to yesterday’s Three-Bean Chili Con Turkey recipe. We assumed that readers would know to soak their dried beans overnight, but it should be clarified. If you have the time, soak your dried beans in water overnight, or for at least one hour. Boil the beans, according to package directions, then add them to the saucepan. In a real hurry? No problem. Although we encourage readers to choose dried beans over canned whenever possible, canned are fine in a pinch – just rinse them well before using.

AUGHHH!!!!! Are you kidding me?! I just thought the text at the top was newsletter chatter and just scrolled down the page to the recipe. Really, I should have known better. I do know better, but I am such a recipe follower... not trusting of my own cooking skills. So what to do what to do... everything was mixed together. The garlic, onions, celery, poblano pepper, spices, turkey, and dried beans... Well. I cried a little. Then I sucked it up and started picking out the beans a spoonful at a time. 20 minutes later I took my pots (the chili pot and pot for beans), sat at the kitchen table so I could sit and watch/listen to TV, and continued to separate the beans from the chili... for 2 hours.

Yes. I. DID.

Then I cooked the beans and added them back into the chili and cooked it according to the recipe. Which ended up drying out. So I had to add more broth, then once John was home and started helping we added more broth, water, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. By this time I was swearing and just sick of looking at this chili. I didn't even taste it. By this time it was ~8:30 PM (I started at 3:30 PM) and I realize that my middle, ring, and pinky fingers of my right hand were really burning, along with my right thumb under the finger nail. I couldn't remember burning myself and it started out as a mild discomfort and got worse and worse. I put my thumb in my mouth for something and when my mouth started burning I figured out that I had gotten pepper stuff under my nail. I washed my hands really well with soap and put some aloe on my fingers. It did not help, in fact it got worse. What the heck, it was just a Poblano Pepper! They're supposed to be fairly mild, it didn't even occur to me to wear gloves though I was careful with how much I touched it and had washed my hands right after handling the pepper. Desperate I googled hot pepper burns and found this treatment on ehow.

How to Treat a Hot Pepper BurnInstructions:

Wear rubber gloves the oil can seep through latex gloves.

Wash your hands thoroughly with dish soap to get all the oil off your hands. Use a fingernail brush to scrub nails with dish soap.

Take an over the counter pain killer as directed

Soak fingers/hands in a bowl of cold milk. The fat in the milk helps soothe hands better than ice water.

Apply an ointment to treat and soothe burns such as aloe vera or hydro cortisone cream.

Repeat the milk soak as needed. It will not harm your hands, so do not hesitate to soak as often as necessary

Put on gloves to clean the area where you cut the peppers. Use a cleanser with bleach to rid your counter tops, cutting boards and knives of any residual oil.

The only milk in the house we have is skim and 1% so I did the soak in the 1% which felt good while my hand was in it, but as soon as it was out it was burning again. Then I tried lowfat yogurt with the same result. Now it's after 10PM and I'm cursing the chili again and debating running to the store to get either full fat milk or burn cream or both. Finally it dawned on me to try butter... 30 minutes later the burning completely stopped. Butter - thank you thank you, I love you, and will never talk badly about you again!

I had a bowl of the chili for lunch. To my surprise it turned out great! Which makes me feel a teeny bit better about yesterday's ordeal. I topped it with colby jack cheese and had yellow corn chips for dipping. Yum-O!

The recipe instructions and ingredient amounts were way off... but I was able to pull it off. I used 2 1/2 cups of tomato sauce, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 2 1/2 cups of chicken broth, and probably a cup of water or more. Hopefully if you try this recipe (which I do recommend) you will have a better experience than mine!

About Me

Hi, I'm Jen. I'm married, have a pupdog named Koda, and live in beautiful Colorado. I created this blog to use as an outlet, so you'll find all kinds of random topics here. Posts all depend on what I'm obsessing about at the moment. Welcome!